The New Year has come and gone, and we’re officially a month into 2020. A new year and a new decade promises new resolutions and new goals, especially if you’re a writer. Setting goals for yourself as a writer allows you to stay focused and motivate yourself. Your goals give you a benchmark to strive toward or surpass. Your goals for 2020 should be achievable. There’s nothing worse than setting a goal that’s too difficult or impossible to achieve, only to feel bad about yourself when you don’t achieve it. In 2020, you want to challenge yourself, but you don’t want to self-sabotage by setting u ..read more

At the beginning of 2019, we wrote a blog about setting writing goals for the new year. Authors succeed when they set writing goals to achieve throughout the year. Self-publishers may have different writing goals. Maybe you set a word count to hit each day, or maybe you wanted to write and edit one poem a week. It doesn’t matter what kind of goal you set, as long as it was realistic and personal. Now, just a month away from the new year (and a new decade!), DiggyPOD wants to revisit the writing goals you set back in January. We’re here to make your goals little easier to achieve with our live ..read more

Every writer dreams of the day they can hold their book in their hands. If you’ve chosen DiggyPOD to self-publish your book, you’re one step closer to fulfilling that dream. Before you can make that dream a reality, though, you need to get your book ready for printing. We purposely ensure that printing with DiggyPOD is easy for new and veteran self-publishers, but that doesn’t mean your work is done as soon as you type “The End.” When you print with DiggyPOD, your book must follow specific guidelines. One of these guidelines specifies that your manuscript must first be converted into a print r ..read more

Laozi said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” If you’ve decided to self-publish a book, congratulations: you’ve taken that first step! This journey may be long, but it’ll be worth it when you hold your book in your hands. Though undoubtedly proud, first time self-publishers often find that they have a lot of questions about the process. While we offer plenty of helpful how-to guides, video tutorials, eager customer service representatives, and thorough blog posts, authors still find themselves bogged down by the specifics. This prompted us to create our First Time Self ..read more

One of the most frequently asked questions self-publishers ask us is how to design their book. If you aren’t a photographer or illustrator, you may wonder where to find the images for your book cover design. You obviously want the best cover you can get, but how can you do that? Your book cover will be the first thing people see when they look at your book, so the pressure is on. Thankfully, the Internet exists. Self-publishers can find beautiful images for their book cover online.  Finding your perfect book cover will take some careful searching and discernment on your part. It’s not all abou ..read more

Have you ever thought about starting a blog? Lots of writers double as bloggers, too. In fact, blogs can be quite profitable. If making money off your writing interests you, keep reading to learn more about how to make money blogging. So, what is blogging?  Back to basics. If you’re new to the online writing sphere, you may be confused about the difference between a blog, an article, a magazine, an op-ed, etc. The Internet holds a plethora of writing, and blogging is just one part of that.  A blog is defined as, “a regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or ..read more

If you want to pursue a career in writing, more likely than not, you’ll do some freelance writing. Writers have a lot of options when it comes to freelance writing jobs online, and if done correctly, they can turn quite a profit. Many writers find successful careers in freelance. If self-publishing a book is a dream of yours, you can support yourself by freelancing for magazines and websites while working on your book. If you’ve ever considered freelance writing, keep reading for more information, tips, and suggestions. Freelance Writing Definition If you’re new to the writing world, you may b ..read more

In your search to find a self-publisher, you may have come across the term “ghostwriter.” Ghostwriting jobs abound online. A popular form of freelancing, many writers find success in this unique arena of publishing. But, what is a ghostwriter? What do they do? We’ll discuss this and more in this blog. From contract agreements to what to charge as a ghostwriter, we’ll cover it all.  What is a Ghostwriter?  What is a ghostwriter? The definition of a ghost writer is, “a person whose job it is to write material for someone else who is the named author.” A ghostwriter either assists in the writing ..read more

If you’re reading this, that means you’ve decided to write a novel or some other kind of book. While not an easy task, self-publishing a book will be one of the most rewarding experiences of your life. If you’ve never done it before, you may not know where to begin. So much more than just writing goes into the novel-writing process. In order to write and self-publish a novel (or any book for that matter), you’ll need to do an incredible amount of planning, prewriting, writing, revising, and editing. In past blogs, we’ve talked about writing, revising, and editing, including mistakes to avoid i ..read more

When people think about publishing a book, they usually think about novels, i.e. fiction books—with genres such as mystery, romance, fantasy, historical, or science fiction—however a large percentage of bestsellers are in fact nonfiction books. Nonfiction, like fiction, covers a wide array of subjects and book types. What unites all nonfiction books is that they’re true stories. Fiction is made-up, purely the product of an author’s imagination (though influenced by real life). Nonfiction, therefore, is not made up. Let’s look at what types of nonfiction books there are. Types of Nonfiction Boo ..read more